Here's one for the Aussies.

Why should Oz get a new flag?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Ensign_of_the_Scottish_Fisheries_Protection_Agency.png

when even the Scottish Fisheries Protection Agency uses nearly the same flag... time to change.

Vijay

how remarkable, the Indian and Irish flags have the same colours, the same triclour (though in different directions) the 2 colours symbolise the 2 largest groupings and th white symbolises peace and unity.

thanks for posting that.

Bit harsh MJ, I was goign to get the southern cross tattooed.

I'm a bit of a mongrel.

Scots Irish raised in the UK, Got both British and Irish passports and I'man Aussie Permenant resident, hopefully becoming a citizen in a couple of years.

What would you think of the Aussie flag,if Oz became a republic, being the feild of blue With the Southern Cross and the Star of federation only?

Basically as is but getting shot of the Pommy Flag.

I think that'd look preety good myself.

There's a move towards this for both Aistralia and New Zealand.

http://www.ausflag.com.au/top_20_designs.html

http://www.nzflag.com/default.cfm

Lots of good ideas, and the sooner there's a republic the better.

The one flag I do like and know a bit about it's symbolism is the Tricolour of the Irish Republic.

The idea is that it combines the two disreate strands and tries to bring peace.

The Orange of the Protestant/Unionist side and the Green of the Catholic/Fiennan side, with the White band symbolising peace and unity.

Always found that oddly moving.

Not wanting your identity known but your work to be liked tends to be a recurent theme with Graffiti artists, given the fact that it is actually a crime, this shouldn't surprise.

bob

lol

pardon my crappy typing

what a neat article.

Only small point is that the White on Blue Saltire is the Cross of St Andrew of Scotland, and the red on white Saltire is the cross of saint Patrick of Ireland.

Which is a very small point.

The Diagonal cross on a flag is called a Saltire but it is almost used interchangeably in Scotland to refer to our flag, pretty presuntuous I know but th sin is of ignorance not conceit.

The Saltire of Scotland is incidentally the worlds longest standing continuusly used flag.

JB

My only point here is that these people are not geniuses.

That is all.

I did state that they have remarkable abilities and facilities.

And you are quite right they do have a place in finding out how the mind works.

But that work will be done ON people like this, not BY people like this.

As they are ...NOT geniuses.

To engage in an argument where the only stated point is that these people are in no way geniuses, and then to try and switch that topic for one that you like better after the event is not an argument.

Some fine sentiments about how they can help us understand the wonders of the mind or some such is to atempt to derail an argument.

You might as well hold up a puppy and invite people to go Awww and pat it's head.

As it has nothing to do with the matter in hand but serves to make you look like a NICE GUY.

see he's a good guy!...he's gotta be right, he has a Puppy.

Nobody with a puppy could be a bad guy.

Yes my point is not nice, these people are broken to a point where they neeed an enormous amount of care, and my saying that in no way changes their situations or ameliorates the predicaments of their families or care workers. And I am all infavour for these people to be cared for an indeed trwasured, but the matter of them being Whizz bang super geniuses is facile wrong headed and self serving. It makes lazy thinkers happy to think that they all have their 90 min after school sub rainman special and have basicallyy happy lives thinking their big thoughts.

Things are just not that nice in the real world. And telling these poor souls what totally special snow flakes they are really does nothing beyond salve a little twinge of discomfort in the veiwer not the veiwed.

they don't care.

there seems to be a point being missed here.

If lenos 50 year old Italian car gets 40mpg, it should still be a matter of some sahme and incredulity that the various listed modern cars get about the same, give or taek.

They should be gettig 3 figures per gallon surel?

I was so prepared for a sneeringing look at litle European cars and was delighted by Leno's enthusiam and understanding of the subject.

I think it gets the 40 mpg by being a fraction of the weight of modern cars, US or European.

Anyway, hots off to Leno for the pieece.

Am now off to see what else he's got.

JB

Well, fine, you are welcome to critisice me for double spacing, but I do it for legibility. My own not yours so much.

I have always typed in a double space manner, and it's not like by doing so I use all the paper.

I don't think i like to dominate the comments section, and if you feel that double spacing succesfully does so then that speaks volumes about how you fell about your own arguments.

Man defeated in debate by double spacing.

BUt i digress.

I didn't say all autistic people were useless, I said that a lot of them are. They can not apply themselves to anything, they are without use.

It is not meant as a pejorative, but a simple statement.

And Asperger's is some times called functional autism, but it's not really autism, on a sliding scale it is to autism what losing a hand is to quadraplegic paralysis.

Yes, i take your point about the fish and Kant and all.

The thing of it is that the fish and the savants that are seeing in umnkown colours even if they are, means nothing.

Information is not information unless it is shared, or can be shared.

And as even in a best case scenario that all these savants live lives filled with wonderful information that only they can perceive....so what?

It is useless.

Genius pivots on processign and using information.

There is no use, ipso facto pepto bismol it is use-less.

not genius.

Again , sorry for double spacing, I do it because my eye sight isn't that great and single spacing looks like noise.

Ok Alex, how can you say that the word is spelled without an S in the US and with one in the UK and say I am wrong.

You've tacitly admitted I am right by admitign it is spelled correctly in the UK.

I continue to contest that it is spelled wrongly in the US.

I am already 66% proven right.

I say it's maths in the UK, so do you.

I say it should be maths in the US, you disagree.

Dammit, I'll get you lot to change yet.

I am off to gather my canadian forces (both Anglo and Franco) for a long bitter campaign to get you lot to say ZED.

can I just add that there are plenty of things the US makes to eat that are symphonies on the tongue.

Really you guys can cook up a storm whe you want.

Just there tends to be a lot od...STATIC out there that fouls the signal.

Even then toning down the sugar wouldn't hurt.

@Alex, no tyou are totally correct mate. I attributed Genius in quotation marks and it was in no way what you said.

You have my total and unstinting apology.

Normally I try to be more thorough about such things.

You have my sincere apology. Shall endeavour to be be better in future.

@Violet,

as much as I can see your intent, it actually says nothing.

These people are nowhere in the "constellation" of genius.

They are quite extraordinary, and they cause quite nice feelings in people, hell even in me.

But that does not mean genius.

No more than Google is a genius.

It is an apparatus to retrieve or access information, it in no way interprets information.

Kim Peek can retrieve any item of info he's read in his life.

But he can in no way understand the information beyond it's set level of information.

JFK was assasinated in....

The exact location time and weather bureau information is nothing to him beyond stats and repetition..

It is regurgitation, it is not digestion.

He could no more interpret this than he could being told that a squirel jumped onto a power transformer, or that Pringles have a new flavour.

It is all just information.

Genius is the facility to take information and interpret it in absolutely new ways.

To see that which can exist between information.

Information processing at it's basics is the capacity to take thesis antithesis and make a synthesis.

That is waht any of us do in any day.

You want Mexican, Polx wants Indian but Violet is ok with either.

So waht do we eat?

Ok that is overly simlified, but this would Stymie these people.

Alright enough from me.

Suffice to say, genius is a very different thing.

It may please you or salve your feelings to attributee this to them but that has so much more to do with your world view than anything to do with these people.

Also, I don't care beyond what I say, as my indifference to these savants is immaterial, they don't care that they are not genuiuses or functional people, omnly you have made an emotional investment in their place in the constellation of genius.

quite quite pointlessly.

Yours Sincerely from the ninty-ninth percentile.

(which means as little as savantism incidentally.)